Document EP 1 224 038 B1 discloses such a storage system comprising a transport system for conveying and sorting products removed from the warehouse and products to be stored in the warehouse. The transport system comprises a circular conveyor which forms a main loop and on which the products are transported by means of a continuous member or a conveyor belt, respectively. Products which have been removed from the racks of the storage system are supplied to the circular conveyor via one of two feed conveyors which form secondary loops and the product streams of which are combined through a common deflector. In order to convey products supplied via the two feed conveyors at the deflector without collision to a free spot on the circular conveyor, the speeds of the feed conveyors and the circular conveyor must be changed constantly. As a result of differing transport speeds of the three conveyor belts, gaps are created between products, and the products are brought into the sequence as required for picking by being combined on the circular conveyor and discharged onto target conveyor belts.
The known storage system has turned out to be disadvantageous in that the permanent change in the speed of the three conveyor belts on which all products removed from the warehouse and all products to be stored in the warehouse are located will lead to high energy costs associated with the transport system, since large masses have to be decelerated and re-accelerated. Depending on the shape, weight and position of the products on the conveyor belts, a sudden deceleration or acceleration may cause products to get out of place or topple over on the conveyor belt or even to fall off from the conveyor belt. In order to avoid this, the transport system of the known storage system is able to decelerate and accelerate only relatively slowly. As a result, it takes longer for gaps to be created on the conveyor belts, whereby the hauling capacity and the sorting capacity of the known transport system are relatively low. In addition, the mechanism for synchronizing the conveyor belts with the circular conveyor is cost-intensive and takes up a lot of space because of the large number of individually actuatable conveyor belts. In order to achieve an economical solution, several retrieval paths of a rack must be combined in one infeed. Said combination is disadvantageous both in terms of space and with regard to the control technology.